Comments on: Why I Never Veto Trades

By: Mays

Mays — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:49:26 +0000

That’s only because you have certain assumptions about what Rollins and Greene are worth. There’s no reason why the 9th place team couldn’t have different assumptions, and there’s no reason why their assumptions couldn’t end up actually being the correct ones.

By: Miles

Miles — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:41:05 +0000

Sure — it’s not impossible for that 9th place team to come back — but it’s a lot closer to impossible if the 9th place team was replacing Rollins with Greene in this scenario.

By: Mays

Mays — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:34:47 +0000

“Would you still not veto the trade if it was between the 9th place and 2nd place team a bit after mid-season?”

Well, if I’m the first place team… :-)

Seriously though, is it impossible to come back from 9th place with half a season left? It can happen, especially if you make a couple of big impact trades.

I think collusion is a topic that gets brought up more often in discussions like these than in real life. I’d have to be pretty certain that that was what was going on before I vetoed.

By: Miles

Miles — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:10:18 +0000

Would you still not veto the trade if it was between the 9th place and 2nd place team a bit after mid-season?

I veto if the deal smells like collusion.

By: Mays

Mays — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:50:15 +0000

@Mike: I’ll make any trade that I think helps my team, and reject any that I think isn’t in my best interests.

I don’t think that is logically inconsistent with what I said above, though. My problem is not with making a prediction, it’s requiring my prediction to meet the approval of third-parties.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:09:14 +0000

Well, to take your side for a moment, a forecast can be off by 50 rounds – just ask Mike Piazza.

I don’t know what portion of the time it would need to be work in one guy’s favor for me to veto it. I probably think of it more along the lines of a normal curve of expected production out of each player, and if the difference between the mean production values is too great, I’d veto it.

By your logic, why would you ever make a trade? Or reject a trade proposal?

By: johnwhorfin

johnwhorfin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:27:26 +0000

I agree with rwperu34, try to stay away from veto leagues. In the leagues I run, I limit trade approval power to the Commissioner. And as commissioner, I think I’ve only vetoed one trade ever, and that was because of a mistaken acceptance (instead of hitting the reject button, the owner inadvertently clicked on accept). In those leagues that I play in with veto rights, I’ve never presumed to know enough to veto a trade. Most vetoes in my experience are done for purely selfish reasons, not to help the person allegedly getting the short end of the stick or to better the league.

By: rwperu34

rwperu34 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:41:25 +0000

I’ve got an even better solution. Don’t play in a league that vetoes trades. I quit a keeper league, because they vetoed a team punting his top flight talent to me for keepers.

My main league now uses an open market trading system, which is far and away the best system. My keeper football league will be experimenting with that next season.

For leagues with a veto system, the only legitimate reason to veto a trade is if it’s suspected collusion. If that’s the case, and a trade gets vetoed, there should be some other consequenses. The way it works in reality is, people veto every single trade for sellfish reasons. If your looking two teams getting better, that means yours just got worse.

By: Mays

Mays — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:24:44 +0000

One more thought: Ron Shandler points out that the best prediction systems are maybe accurate 70% of the time:

“In snake drafts, a projected 9th round player could produce anywhere between a 6th and 13th rounder and fall squarely within the range of 70% accuracy. Yes, 70% accuracy means that any player’s value can vary by as much as seven rounds. ”

Let’s assume that the wisdom of the masses (i.e. a typical fantasy league) is a little worse than that, which means two-thirds of the time they will be within 7-8 rounds of a player’s true value, and one-third of the time they will be wrong by more than that.

I think there is plenty enough unpredictability involved to withhold judgment on just about any trade.

By: Mays

Mays — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:07:56 +0000

@Mike: Thanks for the clarification of your opinion.

Yes, this is a serious post. The example obviously takes things to the extreme, but I think it illustrates the point.

You say it is unfair 9/10 of the time, so what about a trade that favors one team 7 times out of 10? Would 6/10 be enough for you to veto?

Where ever you draw the line, you are making an arbitrary judgment about how close you think a trade needs to be.

I’m saying that we don’t know enough about how players will perform to draw the line anywhere.